


la vide avale tout

by calciumm (tiunsu)



Category: Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Gen, another well fic (jops), good ol' brotherly angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-24 10:04:05
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21097670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tiunsu/pseuds/calciumm
Summary: One day, Sylvain asks Glenn, when the void sears especially sharp, what it’s like to have a little brother.The bleeding sunlight gilds cobalt hair as the boy in question chews on a stalk of grass. He chews, chews, spits it out. “Well,” he starts, “It’s annoying as hell, right? Always blubbering to me for this and that. Never a moment of peace.”“Right.” Sylvain nods solemnly, as if he understands.





	la vide avale tout

One day, Sylvain asks Glenn, when the void sears especially sharp, what it’s like to have a little brother. 

The bleeding sunlight gilds cobalt hair as the boy in question chews on a stalk of grass. He chews, chews, spits it out. “Well,” he starts, “It’s annoying as hell, right? Always blubbering to me for this and that. Never a moment of peace.” 

“Right.” Sylvain nods solemnly, as if he understands. 

“Kid brothers, I’m tellin’ ya,” snorts Glenn. He reclines into the grass with a groan, body aching from the harsh training befitting a young Shield of Faerghus. There’s a deep magenta bruise on his exposed forearm, and Sylvain cannot help but stare. An absent motion almost brings his hand to his own side, before he places it firmly back down. The dirt is cool and moist between his fingers, he notes detachedly.

They sit like that for a time, in an oddly tense silence, before Glenn taps a fist to his thigh, brows arched in query. Sylvain can see his thoughts turning, speeding. Glenn has always been sharp, remarkably quick on the uptake. Sometimes it’s frustrating, how he can’t seem to hide anything from him. He’s not sure if it frustrates him now. 

Glenn’s moment of realisation is visible in the minuscule, pained crinkling of his eyes, in the subtle downturn of his mouth. Sylvain wants to turn his head away from the pity he sees there, but he wants, simultaneously, to face it head on- to bask in it. 

“If anything were to happen to him, though- Fe, I mean,” says Glenn suddenly, hastily, voice uncharacteristically low. “...I’d bring hell down on the bastards. Rip them to shreds. He’s gross and loud and dribbly all the time, and he never leaves me alone, but I’d rather deal with all that then not have him in my life. He’s family.” 

Glenn grasps his shoulder, palm wide and warm through linen. He has yet to grow into his large hands and feet, like Sylvain himself. They make a fine pair, two boys with mismatched limbs like reverse mirror images, the same looming shadow of fate over them. There’s another shadow over Sylvain, though, and it digs its claws into his throat. It waits. He bleeds. 

Sylvain doesn’t lean into the touch. After a moment, Glenn takes his hand away. 

“...you’re family, too”. A note of urgency permeates Glenn’s voice. It’s encouraging. It’s gentle. So gentle that it cuts into him like swords would into flesh, a silent, easy cleave.

Sylvain does turn away, this time, the void more prominent than ever. Excuses himself, _ it’s pretty late _, and trudges down the hill, empty and cold. Glenn’s gaze bores into the back of his head. It follows him home, all the way to the shallow comfort of his room, into the ephemerality of his dreams. 

‘_You’re not him_’, the voices taunt. ‘_And he’ll never be you. Different, different, you’re all so different_.’ 

-

Perhaps the sliver of sunset spent with Glenn had been emboldening after all, because Sylvain finds himself hovering near the entrance to the training hall the following morning, watching Miklan hacking away at a well-worn dummy. His lunges are calculated and powerful, and his face is, for once, free of the shadow of rancor. When he thinks he’s alone, like this, Miklan is the epitome of grace, handsome and respectable. A proper heir. 

Sylvain steels himself, taking in a deep breath and releasing it slow and steady, then steps inside. 

“Miklan!” he calls out, wincing when his voice cracks halfway. “I- uh, could you-” 

He stutters to a halt when his brother's lip curls at the sight of him, the sheer abhorrence scalding. 

“Brat,” intones the man flatly. The disparity between what his body and voice convey has him feeling like _ prey _. He resents, viciously, the trembling rippling through his veins. 

Still, he came here for a reason. He clenches his hands into fists until they don’t shake anymore, thinks of the way Felix looks up at Glenn when he wants his attention, how his eyes go wide and imploring and _ trusting _. He startles both himself and Miklan with the directness of his gaze, knows it’s because he’s never been open like this before. 

“Can you teach me how to do that?” The words are dry in his mouth, leaving rough anticipation in their wake. 

_ Please _ , he doesn’t say. _ Look at me. _

Miklan’s expression goes shuttered. Sylvain can’t read him. The void cackles at him, distantly. _ Should’ve known _, it whispers. 

Then Miklan turns away without a word, and Sylvain is drowned in the surging pressure of his disappointment and biting frustration. It's not frustration at Miklan, no- he stopped feeling that years ago. He's frustrated at himself for even daring to wish. Heaving out a breath, Sylvain prepares to leave the room with as much decorum as he can muster, flustered as he is, but he doesn’t quite manage to fulfill any part of this plan, for a wooden lance goes flying into his chest, and he’s only able to catch it on sheer reflex. His mouth gapes open in acute shock as he whips back to stare at his brother, something vaguely hopeful blooming within him. 

“Where are you looking?” demands Miklan, exchanging his own steel lance for a wooden one at the rack. There’s a distinct lack of venom in his voice, and it sets a tiny flame of hope flickering in Sylvain’s chest. 

He steps tentatively forward as Miklan slides into position, smooth and practiced. The lance is wonderfully solid in his hands. 

“Well? You’ll have to be more specific. Teach you what?” 

Sylvain barely tamps down on the grin quivering at his lips. 

The void goes silent for the rest of the afternoon, its roar silenced by the tentative fullness of his heart. Miklan’s blows are a little too harsh, the way he corrects his posture a little too clumsy, but he’s still fully present in a way Sylvain has never witnessed before. He bears the bruises from the session with pride. 

At dinner, when Miklan is brutally scolded for injuring the Gautier heir, no matter that Sylvain had asked for it his own damn self, the bruises distort into brands on his skin, burned frigid and heavy. 

_

When Sylvain finds himself at the bottom of a slimy old well the next week, he isn’t surprised. He had floundered in the disgusting, stagnant water in a panic as Miklan dragged the lid back over the well’s mouth, enclosing him in pitch darkness; closing the lid to his coffin. His screams are swallowed up by unforgiving shapes all around him, by the cold, by the emptiness. 

His groping fingers discover the wooden pail by accident, almost sending it bobbing out of reach with his desperate lunge towards it. It’s rotted through and barely buoyant enough to keep his head above water, but for now, it’s the only thing between him and the void. As his body grows numb and unfeeling, and his cries for help dwindle down to scratchy whispers, he wonders if he is even still alive. Or if he had died minutes- hours- years ago. He is not a ghost, nor is he a memory. He just is, and that knowledge is an agony that suspends him here, in this void, in total isolation. 

“Should’ve known,” whispers the boy, or is he a boy? It comes out so thin that only the void can hear. 

Should’ve known.

**Author's Note:**

> after i drew this https://twitter.com/kingkrcoo/status/1205256788863586304 i then wanted to write a thing so. here's the Thing


End file.
